


heedless of the wind and weather

by lyricalprose (fairylights)



Series: 2013 Fic Advent Calendar [7]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: 2013 Fic Advent Calendar, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-09
Updated: 2013-12-09
Packaged: 2018-01-04 04:03:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1076322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairylights/pseuds/lyricalprose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Having rather mindlessly followed Rose over to her vanity, the Doctor finds himself staring blankly at a small Christmas tree, decorated with blinking multicolored lights, that is sitting just next to the mirror. “I didn’t know you were so–” He trails off, poking gingerly at the miniature tree, which somehow seems to make it blink even more vigorously. “<i>–enthusiastic</i> about Christmas.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	heedless of the wind and weather

**Author's Note:**

> [always-themagicword](http://always-themagicword/tumblr.com) asked “Doctor/Rose and decorating the TARDIS for the holidays.”
> 
> Fill #7 for my [2013 fic advent calendar](http://lyricalprose.tumblr.com/tagged/2013-fic-advent-calendar).

It all takes him quite by surprise, honestly.  
  
“Did you know,” the Doctor asks one morning, just after Rose answers his knock at her bedroom door, “that there’s a wreath on your door?”  
  
“’Course I did,” she answers, before turning away from him and making off in the direction of her vanity. “It’s Christmastime, isn’t it?”  
  
It’s only then that he realizes Rose is holding a length of shiny, silver plastic Christmas garland, much like the ones he’d seen tacked up all around Jackie’s flat last year, just after he regenerated. It’s not the only bit of Christmas bric-a-brac to be found in Rose’s room, either – there are gold and silver garlands draped over the headboard of her bed, along with various other festive accoutrements strewn throughout the place.  
Having rather mindlessly followed Rose over to her vanity, the Doctor finds himself staring blankly at a small Christmas tree, decorated with blinking multicolored lights, that is sitting just next to the mirror. “I didn’t know you were so–” He trails off, poking gingerly at the miniature tree, which somehow seems to make it blink even more vigorously. “ _–enthusiastic_ about Christmas.”  
  
Rose simply repeats, “Doctor, it’s _Christmastime._ ”  
  
“Rose, time on the TARDIS is–”  
  
“Relative, I know.” Rose’s interruption is airy and unconcerned, the reply of someone who is repeating something they’ve been told many times before. Unfazed, she continues stringing the shiny silver garland along the top of her vanity mirror.  
  
“You see,” she says, just as she finishes up the task of decorating the mirror, “ _I_ have been keeping _track._ ”  
  
“Keeping track of…Christmas?”  
  
Rose gives him an expression that he privately refers to as her _you’re such a nutter_ face. “No, you loony. Keeping track of Earth time. Of how long’s gone by, since we left London last Christmas. After you – after you changed.”  
  
She picks up a small, nondescript book that’s sitting on top of the vanity. “According to my calculations,” she says, with a put-on pompous air, “it’s been almost a year, in linear time, since we spent Christmas at Mum’s. Which makes it Christmastime again, now.”  
  
“Oh.” The Doctor takes a moment to run his own calculations in his head. It takes less than a second, and yes – she’s right. Just under a year since he regenerated, just under a year that she’s been traveling with this latest version of him. Going by the standard Earth calendar, it’d put them somewhere around December eighteenth, to be precise. Not that Rose’s linear timeline and the Earth calendar match up, of course – the timestream they’re committed to popping back in on now and again, when they go to visit Jackie, is suspended somewhere in the spring months at the moment. “You know, I could’ve kept track of that for you, if you’d asked.”  
  
“No,” Rose says, shaking her head. “I like it. Keeps me sort of…I don’t know, _grounded_ , maybe.” Then she smiles brightly at him. “That’s the why of the decorations, you know? What’s the point of knowin’ that it’s Christmas if you just let it pass you by?”  
  
The Doctor eyes the tiny Christmas tree on the vanity with trepidation. “Just how much decorating are you planning on doing, here?”  
  
Rose’s smile turns positively wicked.  
  
The next day, he finds the console draped with red and green lights.  
  
When he takes them down, they reappear, along with garlands and wreaths and Christmas trees , in the library – and the observatory, and the kitchen, and the storage room, and even in the squash court.  
  
(Rose is delighted).  
  
—  
  
Rose insists that since it’s Christmas, she needs to do a bit of Christmas shopping.  
  
He takes her to an asteroid market in the Diraxa system, and at first they get so distracted by the transplanted phosphorescent vegetation there that Rose nearly forgets that she’d meant for this to be a shopping trip. Nothing can _grow_ on this asteroid, not really – supporting life at all is only possible with the assistance of half a hundred different complex environmental systems – but the composition of the artificial atmosphere interacts with certain types of plants in such a way as to make them _glow_.  
  
Rose stands under the soft blue light of a t’lykk tree, transfixed by the shimmer of the leaves and flowers, for five straight minutes before she’s ready to move on.  
  
(He’s transfixed, too, but not by the tree).  
  
Later, Rose presents him with a small package, wrapped in shiny red paper and tied with green ribbon. “Your Christmas present,” she says, sounding shy in a way that’s very unusual for Rose, and the Doctor finds himself so curious that he tears into the wrapping right away.  
  
Inside the package is a tie. Dark red, with delicate blue leaves and blooms curling around it – the flora of the t’lykk trees, sewn into the burgundy silk with shimmery thread.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Rose says haltingly, when he doesn't say anything right away. “I know it’s not – it’s not _really_ Christmas, but I thought it might be nice to get you something anyways, an’ it was right there on the shelf, next to the thing I got for my mum. I know red doesn’t really go with the brown.” She gestures helplessly in the general direction of his suit, while firmly avoiding his eyes. “But I saw it and I thought – it was like the trees, you know? I just–”  
  
Before Rose can finish the stuttering thought, the Doctor has wrapped his arms around her in a crushing hug.  
  
He doesn’t have a present to give her. He’d not really bought into the idea of bringing Christmas onto the TARDIS, despite Rose’s efforts to the contrary. It’s a _human_ holiday – fun to participate in on the occasion that he lands during the season, but not something he’s ever observed outside of those sort of happy (or not-so-happy, as the case may be) accidents.  
  
But for a moment, he imagines a dozen more Christmases with Rose, on the TARDIS, each the culmination of another full year they’ve spent together, and the sheer force with which he _wants_ each and every one of them knocks the breath from his lungs.  
  
“It’s okay,” he mumbles, into her hair, and Rose’s arms reach fully around him, squeezing him tighter. “I’ve got other suits, believe it or not. Something’s bound to go with red.”  
  
Rose giggles into his chest. He pulls her in closer and thinks, _blue, maybe. Blue._  
  
—  
  
They go to visit Jackie the next day.  
  
Rose has decided against wrapping her present – after all, it’s not Christmas for her mother, not yet.  
  
(He can’t bring himself to take down the decorations until long after Martha’s left).


End file.
